


Castling

by EndoplasmicPanda



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Background Promptis - Freeform, Family, Family Bonding, Family Drama, Family Fluff, Fluff, For once? Not angst, Gen, Pre-Canon, Regis is my favorite and he deserves the world, because I just can't help myself, not past chapter one at least
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 07:28:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14183958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndoplasmicPanda/pseuds/EndoplasmicPanda
Summary: Castling (verb) -A move in the game of chess involving a player's king and either of the player's original rooks. It is the only move in chess in which a player moves two pieces in the same move, and it is the only move aside from the knight's move where a piece can be said to "jump over" another.When King Regis lets himself get swept away by the storm that is his son, he realizes that sometimes it takes someone half your age to remind you how to live. Shameless Dad!Regis fluff.





	Castling

**Author's Note:**

> This is what happens when I can't sleep, can't get any work done on the sixty million projects I've got started, and dive ass-first into a new fandom. Also post-midterms depression. It happens.
> 
> I love Regis, okay? He's just so. Sad. I want to give him a big hug. So that's what this fic is going to be - just one big ol' hug for the King.

It starts, like everything else in Regis’s life, at the doors to his throne room.

There’s a meeting that afternoon, held between his advisers and his staff and his army of ambassadors that flutter out into the achingly wide world of Eos to mutter and sputter between their counterparts cut from the same cloth stretched between different countries. It isn’t, for all intents and purposes, a _special_ meeting; it’s just a meeting, and it’s one that Regis approaches with the same dull, soulless monotony that seems to leech at him from the undersides of his legs where the throne cuts into his skin.

And then they ask for him to invite Noctis.

Regis’s fingers dig hidden trenches into the arms of his chair. He sighs, leans back, props his good leg under his bad one and tries to get comfortable without forgoing regality.

Noctis had been ignoring him. Regis wasn’t ignorant. After his disaster of a birthday party the previous week, Regis was surprised Noctis bothered turning up around him at all.

“Are you alright, sire?” his steward asks, appearing at the base of the staircase in front of him. Regis swallows, lets out a low sigh.

“Yes,” he says, and straightens out his bad knee. When he winces, the steward’s eyes light up with understanding, and he breaks into a swift bow.

“I’ll have your nurses bring you a bottle of anti-inflammatories,” the steward says, and turns on his heel.

Regis bites his lip. “Thank you,” he says. He looked down at his wrist, pulls aside his black suit jacket and peeks at the time on his simple gold wristwatch. The front doors to the throne room click open, whining at the joints, and Regis’s eyes flash across the room.

“Ten minutes until the Lucian ambassadors from Altissia arrive, Your Majesty.”

 So much for needing a watch. It’s a small comfort, Regis thinks, letting his sleeve flutter back down his arm. His time may not be his, but at least he can rely on himself for that much.

When it’s stolen from him, he feels it.

The minutes tick by. Regis tries not to fidget. He turns, looks out the window to his right, stares down at the layer of fog that’s blanketing the city.

More squeaking from the joints across the hall, and the steward reappears, back stiff and nose high. “Your Majesty,” he says, clearing his throat and entering the room. He stands to the side, waits for the guards to file in behind him to hold the door. “His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Noctis--”

“He knows who I am, Macario – seriously? Do you have to do that every time?”

Regis sits up taller, lets his bad knee fall in line with his good one, and waits.

“I _told_ you to just let me in from now on,” Regis hears Noctis grumble from around the corner. “I don’t need all the pomp.”

The steward ignores him, opting instead to stare at a carefully-curated point in the distance.

Regis smiles, despite himself, watches from over the tips of the curled fingers around his chin as Noctis strolls in, boots cutting into the carpet like stakes in mud. His son stops at the foot of the staircase, props a hand up on his waist, and shakes his head, letting the motion drift down through the rest of his body like an eel.

“What?” he asks.

“Hello to you, too,” Regis says, quirking an eyebrow. “How is my son on this dreadful summer morning?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Noctis grunts, shrugging. “What do you want?”

Regis blinks, steals a look away. That’s just it, isn’t it? It’s not about what _he_ wants. It’s about what the country _needs_ , and what that is, apparently, is for their crown prince to sit in on run-of-the-mill housekeeping trivialities.

Regis clears his throat and stiffens on the throne. Happy birthday again, son. “Did you bring any formal wear?”

He could have predicted the way Noctis collapsed in on himself thirty minutes in advance. “Are you serious?”

“Unfortunately so.” Regis looks down, watches the way the thin beams of sunlight from the (achingly far away) windows cut through the dust and static in the throne room’s air. “If you will—”

“Citadel gates report that the Lucian ambassadors are on site, Your Majesty,” another steward says, whispers in his ear. Regis can tell that Noctis hears it, too. “Five minutes until they are through security.”

“Ambassadors?” Noctis bites, letting out a dismissive snort. He spins, turns on his heel and walks back towards the door.

“Your Highness?” Macario stammers, stepping in front of him. “His Majesty did not dismiss you—"

“We were done anyway,” Noctis says, brushing the adviser aside. “Just take me to where my damn suit is. Let’s get this over with.”

* * *

The meeting was as normal as it was boring.

Regis sits tall against the thin wooden arch of his chair, looking down the long, miserable table of stiff-upper-lipped foreigners with a penchance for ass-kissing.

And then he looks down, stares at the seat to his right, and it’s Noctis that’s there, all fake smiles and hollow eyes and simmering anger bubbling under his skin – and suddenly, the meeting is anything but normal.

Regis feels ashamed, all at once, because it’s the first time he realizes how much he may have cursed his son simply by forcing him to exist.

The meeting ends the same way every other meeting does, and that’s with slow footsteps and far too many handshakes. It takes twenty minutes before an enthusiastic ambassador from one of the fringe states finishes talking Noctis’s ear off, and even longer before the doors to the meeting chamber close and they’re gone for good.

The guards by the door give Regis a questioning look, and he stands, waving them off with one hand and gripping his cane with the other. They slip into the hallway, and for the first time in what feels like years, Regis is alone with his son.

Noctis tears his tie from around his neck and tosses it on the table. “I’m going home,” he says. He makes for the door.

Regis stutters forward, his cane clinking against the rugged floor. His eyes are wide. “Are you finding your living accommodations suitable?”

“Living accommodations?” Noctis says, scrunching up his eyes in mocking confusion. “Dad, just call it what it is. It’s an apartment.”

Regis swallows, looks away for a moment, and flashes his eyebrows in quiet compromise. “Apartment, then.” He tries a smile, but that seems to just upset Noctis more.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice clipped and sharp. “Anything to get me out of this hellhole.”

“Noctis,” Regis sighs, pressing his full weight into the soft metal wrapped around his arm.

“Noctis what?” he says, spinning back around, taking a step forward. “ _What_ , Dad?”

“We need to talk,” Regis says. “About last week.”

Noctis looks away. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, gripping the back of a discarded chair – but he doesn’t move.

Regis takes his chances with an extra shaky footstep. “What happened that night was not fair to you. It should not have happened, and I sincerely, deeply apologize to you for it.”

Noctis grunts out another fake laugh. “That’s rich.”

Regis blinks. Before he can open his mouth to respond, his son is already sighing, dipping his head down, staring at a loose sheet of meeting notes that one of the more careless ambassadors left behind.

“You never even asked,” Noctis says. “If that’s the party I wanted. You just assumed.”

Regis stiffens. There’s a part of him, deep down, subdued by years of monarchical training, that wants to remind Noctis of protocol. There is a way things are done – a textbook that is followed, down to the letter, to keep the formalities of their office in check. Without order, what were they, after all?

But just as loud as that voice is another, and that one is of a far younger Regis, suffering through the same miserable experiences by the hand of his own father over forty years before.

Despite himself, he smiles.

“You’re right,” Regis admits. “I didn’t.”

“Please don’t give me a lecture, Dad,” Noctis says. His voice is quiet.

Another footstep – this time, Noctis flinches. It makes Regis want to fade into the ground.

“I’m not going to lecture you, Noctis,” he says instead, reaching out with his free hand and bracing it against his son’s arm, letting some of his weight settle across the boy’s shoulders. “You don’t need that. Not from me, and especially not on your birthday.”

Noctis looks up. “That’s a new one.”

“I know that I cornered you,” Regis says. “With all of the… ‘pomp’, as you call it.” He chuckles. “Trust me - nobody knows the feeling of expectation settling on your shoulders all at once more than I do. I lived through it, too, you know.”

Noctis sighs. “I know. I just… don’t think I’m ready.”

“Are we ever, really?” Regis says. He lets his thumb rub a small circle into his son’s shoulder, readjusts his grip on his cane. “I don’t want to rob you of your youth. Nor do I want to force you into something you aren’t quite ready for. I apologize for making assumptions, and for being careless.”

The thin line of Noctis’s mouth fills back out again. “Thanks,” he says, and he’s not meeting Regis’s eyes. “I’m sorry for throwing a tantrum and leaving early.”

Regis laughs. “See?” he says. “It appears neither of us is all that great at reading between the lines.”

Noctis snorts again, but this time it’s not condescending. He ducks out from underneath his father’s embrace. “I do need to get home, though.”

There’s something in the back of Regis’s mind – an afterthought left behind from memories of a childhood he’d mostly forgotten. He runs a tongue over his lips, weighs his odds, and makes a decision – just like any king would.

“There was something else,” Regis says, clearing his throat.

Noctis pauses, raises an eyebrow at him.

“I wanted to make it up to you,” Regis continues, smiling a bit to himself. “I know we haven’t had much time together in recent months—”

“Years,” Noctis corrects.

“Has it really been that long?” Regis lets his chin dip to his chest. “I’m sorry, Noctis.”

“You’re the king,” Noctis shrugs, and the way he just accepts it, just lets it roll off his shoulders _hurts_ , almost. “You have other things to worry about.”

Regis’s eyes twinkle. “Not next Saturday, I don’t.”

Noctis blinks. “What?”

“I took the day off,” Regis says. He winks. “I figured after thirty-five years, I’m afforded at least one vacation.”

Noctis frowns. “Dad…”

“Dad _what?”_

“You can’t just do that.” He runs a hand through his hair. “What if something happens? You’ll need to be around.”

“Now that’s the most princely thing I think I have ever heard come out of your mouth,” Regis smirks. “Relax. There are protocols in place. And besides.” He waves his caned arm around. “I’m an old man now. I’m nothing but a pawn.”

“An important pawn,” Noctis says.

“An important pawn that’s all yours for a weekend,” Regis says, smiling. “I miss you, my son. You may think it’s lonely from where you are, but trust me – sometimes it gets just as isolating at the top of the throne.”

Noctis bites his lip. He looks at the floor, traces a pattern in the rug with his eyes. He steals a quick glance at Regis from behind his bangs, and in that moment Regis sees his deceased wife.

“An entire weekend?” he says.

“An entire weekend,” Regis confirms.

Something in Noctis’s eyes lights up for the first time in what feels like eons. “I’ll start planning, then,” he says, and leaves the Citadel not in a storm, but instead a breeze.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to write something that isn't shameless family drama; whooooops. Unbetaed, because again - I have no self control.
> 
> Come scream at me on [**Tumblr**](http://endoplasmicpanda.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
